


Of Childhood Illnesses

by xxSparksxx



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Past Character Death, References to Illness, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 03:32:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16568819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: “Mama’s never ill, is she?” Jeremy asks his father. “Never ever.”“Well, not quite never,” Ross says. “She was very badly ill once.”In which Jeremy is ill in bed, Ross and Demelza tend to him, and they share an old pain.





	Of Childhood Illnesses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainpuddle13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainpuddle13/gifts).



> Notes: Based on a prompt from tumblr, slightly re-worded to make it fit the period better:   
> “This is ridiculous, how are you not sick and I am?”
> 
> Beta-read by mmmuse.
> 
> For rainpuddle13, who loves Jeremy.

“This is silly. Why are you not sick and I am, Papa?”

The question, asked in a fractious, hoarse voice, stops Demelza before she can enter the bedroom. She has a posset for him that ought to be drunk before it cools, but she can’t help but want to wait to hear what her husband will say in response to Jeremy’s querulous question. Jeremy isn’t usually given to complaining about the unfairness of life, but he has been sick in bed for over a week, and he is clearly miserable and peevish.

“I never get sick, Jeremy,” Ross says lightly. “I believe I’ve only ever been ill once in my life – when I was a boy, and had scarlet fever, just like you.”

Jeremy sighs. Demelza can picture him in bed, tucked into clean sheets, his face flushed, his eyes squinting against the candlelight. It _is_ unfair for him to be so ill just when the harvest is about to begin, a time of year that Jeremy loves, and especially with his Papa home from London. Normally they would both be in the fields most of the day, joining their workers in gathering in the crops. Instead Ross goes out by himself, and Jeremy is confined to his bedroom. He hasn’t been so ill that anybody has been seriously worried about him, but ill enough that Dwight had instructed him to be kept in bed at least until the rash has begun to recede. And Clowance and Bella have been sent to stay with the Enyses until the danger of contagion has passed, which has deprived Jeremy of a daytime companion.

“I don’t like it,” Jeremy rasps. 

“No, I don’t imagine you do.” There’s a rustling; Demelza imagines Ross reaching out to tuck the sheets a little closer around Jeremy. “But you’re getting a little better every day. Mama says you’ll be out of bed in no time.”

Jeremy sighs a deep sigh, and then coughs, the air irritating his throat. Demelza reaches for the door handle, intent on making herself known and giving Jeremy the posset to soothe his throat, but then Jeremy speaks again, and she hesitates. She knows how much Jeremy prizes his time with Ross, and she doesn’t want to disturb them prematurely. 

“Mama’s never ill either, is she?” he asks his father. “Never ever.”

“Well, not quite never,” Ross says after a moment. “She was very badly ill once.” Jeremy coughs again, and Demelza hears another rustling. “Here, sip this,” Ross instructs his son. There is water beside Jeremy’s bed; Ross must be holding the glass for him. “But no, generally Mama doesn’t get ill. She’s too quick to let any illness catch her, isn’t she?”

“When was she ill, Papa?” Jeremy asks. “I don’t remember.”

“It was before you were born. Quite a long time ago now. It was...let me think. Yes, about a year before you were born.”

“A _long_ time ago,” says Jeremy, clearly impressed. “Was it scarlet fever too?”

“No.” There’s silence. Demelza thinks Ross is going to leave the story untold, and she wouldn’t blame him. Whenever their children are ill like this – ill enough to quell their boisterous spirits and compel them to bed rest – they both think of what happened once before. For Demelza, every fever or sore throat brings a sharp pang of fear. For Ross, she knows, the fear is deeper, keener. He had held their darling daughter in his arms when she died, and though they rarely speak of it, Demelza knows it is a thing Ross can never forget, a pain he carries with him always. Perhaps she knows it _because_ he rarely speaks of it. 

But to her surprise, Ross continues. “It was the putrid throat, and your Mama and your sister both had it. Your sister Julia, I mean.” 

“Ohhhh,” says Jeremy, a long-drawn-out sound of comprehension. “My sister that I never met.” Ross hums agreement. Demelza puts a hand on the doorframe to steady herself. She had thought, once, that the grief for Julia would never fade. She had thought the agony of it would never end. As time went on, she had discovered the truth of it. The sharp edges of it have dulled, as people had promised her they would, and it is many years now since she thought of Julia every day. But the pain has changed. As her other children have grown – particularly Clowance and Bella – she has wondered what Julia would have been like, if she had survived. Each milestone they reach makes her remember the little child who never lost a tooth, nor learned to read, nor was taken by her father on the pommel of his horse and taught to ‘ride’. 

Bella, as a baby, smiled in just the same way that Julia had. She is growing out of it now. Or perhaps she is simply growing into the kind of child that Julia might have become.

“Was that when she died?” Jeremy asks, with breath-taking innocence. “When Mama was ill too?”

They have always been honest with their children. It has never been a conscious choice, but an unspoken agreement between them that they will conceal only those things which would injure the children to hear about. So the children know that they had an older sister, but that she died before Jeremy was born. They have seen the little gravestone in Sawle churchyard. Demelza goes there every year on Julia’s birth date, to lay flowers, and sometimes Jeremy has come with her, and sometimes Clowance. They are both as self-centred as any child can be, so often blissfully unaware of things that don’t immediately impact themselves, but they are both sensitive enough to know, on those occasions, that the memory of their deceased sister pains Demelza, and they never ask questions.

Neither Jeremy nor Clowance has ever asked her how Julia died. She has always supposed that they have never asked Ross, either, and now Jeremy has confirmed it. But Ross, who has borne so many losses in his life, should not have to answer this question. She thinks he _will_ not answer it, because he is silent for a very long time. She sets down the posset on the landing table, brushes a tear from her cheek. Inside the bedroom, she hears Jeremy heave a great sigh, and more rustling of bed linens. 

“I’m sorry, Papa,” her son offers. “It doesn’t matter.” Perhaps he doesn’t know why he should be sorry, but it’s like Jeremy to offer an apology regardless. Demelza closes her eyes tight and feels a great swell of love for him. 

“It’s alright, Jeremy.” Another rustle. The bed creaks, as if Ross has shifted position. “I don’t mind you asking. And yes, that was when Julia died. She and your mother were both very, very ill. Much more ill than you are. Your uncle Dwight was here night and day for…quite a long time. Julia was…” He clears his throat. “She was very young, and it was a very bad illness. By the end she didn’t have the strength to go on. There was nothing anybody could have done.”

It’s more than she expected him to say. Another tear slips down her cheek. His sorrow is so clear in his voice, and she knows how he will look, now. The set of his jaw, the gleam in his eye, the grim determination to bear the sorrow. So many years since Julia died, but speaking of it still pains him. Ross normally sleeps soundly, but occasionally – just _occasionally_ – he has a nightmare, and in the dark of the night he confesses to her what he will never say in daylight: that he still dreams of those hellish days when he had nursed them both and lost Julia. Some wounds can never heal entirely.

“You must have been very sad,” Jeremy says after a while. “And Mama.”

“Yes, we were. For a long time.” Now Ross’s voice changes, becomes warmer. “But then you came to us, Jeremy, and you made us both much happier. And then Clowance, and Isabella-Rose.” 

“None of us are Julia, though,” offers her perspicacious son. Demelza takes that as her cue. She retrieves the posset and pushes the bedroom door open. Ross and Jeremy both look up at her, bearing identical startled expressions. 

“I’ve brought you a posset, my lover,” she says cheerfully. “T’will soothe your throat marvellously.” She bustles over to the bed and folds Jeremy’s hands carefully around the cup. “Drink it before it gets cold. Ross, supper is ready when you are.” She checks Jeremy’s temperature by putting her hand to his forehead, and then straightens, pleased. “You’re a little cooler, Jeremy,” she approves. “Do you feel a little better?”

“A little bit,” Jeremy agrees. His face is growing more flushed from the steam rising from the posset. “Thank you, Mama.”

“I’m ready now, if Jeremy is happy for me to leave him,” Ross says. He rises from the bed and stretches; he’s tired from the day’s labour. Later tonight he’ll complain that he’s getting too soft in London, and will contemplate leaving Parliament, as he does every year when he comes back and flings himself headlong into the harvest work. It has become as predictable as the tides, and when Ross glances at her with a rueful smile, she knows he’s thinking the same thing. But she doesn’t mind, especially when she knows what usually follows those complaints of softness. 

“May I have a book, please?” asks Jeremy, and Ross turns away to find one for him. She doubts he’ll read much – his head has been aching too much for it – but it’s a safe enough distraction for him, and will keep him in bed. “Thank you, Papa. Will you come and say goodnight later?”

“Yes, but I hope you’ll be asleep,” is Ross’s answer. He bends over and kisses Jeremy’s forehead, and Demelza does the same.

“Rest, my lover,” she encourages him. “You’ll be well again soon enough.”

Outside on the landing, with the bedroom door firmly shut, Ross catches her about the waist and pulls her close to him. She rests her head against his shoulder and unashamedly clings to him.

“How much of that did you hear?” he inquires. 

“All of it, I suppose.” She feels him pressing a kiss to her hair, and she sighs, a knot of tension in her stomach beginning to loosen. “Poor Jeremy. He so dislikes being ill.”

“He’ll be well soon enough. Scarlet fever isn’t anything to worry about, not as lightly as he has it.” He sways her slightly, and kisses her hair again. Then he nudges her head off his shoulder and kisses her mouth, gently and chastely. “He is so much your son,” he remarks then, loosening his hold on her. Demelza looks her inquiry, and Ross shrugs and takes her hand as they turn towards the stairs. “Oh, you know. Perceptive. What he said – that none of them are Julia.”

She thinks about her long-dead daughter, and about her three living children, and about the man standing beside her who has been so very essential to her for so much of her life. All different loves, none quite like another. When Jeremy had been born, she had been so happy, and he had been a source of love and strength to her throughout his earliest years, when she had been badly in need of both. Then Clowance, another daughter, born in a much happier time, and then little Bella, barely out of her clouts but already making her mark on Nampara. And always Ross: husband, friend, companion, sometimes difficult and too-often absent but always beloved.

“No,” she says at last. “No, he was right. None of them are Julia. But I wouldn’t want them to be. Would you?”

“No,” he agrees. “No, I wouldn’t.” He kisses her again when they reach the bottom of the stairs, and Demelza leans into him and allows him to make her forget to worry about Jeremy, just for a while.


End file.
